Yes well I happen to be Cloutier's biggest defender on here and you're bias against him lead you to remembered and state things that were either flat out wrong or attributed to Potvin. These things really make me rage!!!
My opinion on Cloutier has always been the same. I switched from a bandwagon fan to an avid fan mid-season before we signed Messier, so I had no Kirk McLean nostalgia but rather had to live through a number of long years while the Canucks were plagued with a carousel of bad goaltending (Irbe aside). Cloutier wasn't great but he wasn't bad and he was the first guy to come in and stabilize the position, so I appreciate him for that. To me he was basically just a Jacob Markstrom.
I think there's a couple of factors that go into public opinion on him. First with the Canucks being good again brought a lot of new fans onto the bandwagon with expectations of success who didn't remember the bad goaltending years and this was the pre-cap era so all the top teams had
elite goaltending: Hasek, Roy, Brodeur, Belfour, Joseph, and the like. The fans were demanding a Luongo but all they got was a Markstrom... and ironically note how when we moved into this category with Luongo public opinion had shifted to top tier goaltending didn't really matter and you don't want to spend to much cap on a goalie
Next he had the misfortune of a once in a career flub coming at the worst time right at the start of his career as a starter and making it all anyone could remember. Don't need to go into too much detail on that.
Finally, he really never had much opportunity to reverse opinion. He really only had a 4 year window and two of those playoffs were as the 8th seeds against dynasty teams Detroit and Colorado. He was getting better every year but in playoffs #4 against Calgary he was playing great then suffered a fluke injury stepping on a bad spot of ice and leaving the game for Auld who wasn't nearly as good and probably costing us the series. He was only 27 at this point and it was followed by the lockout year, should have been going into his goaltending prime but instead the injuries had piled up and he was no longer the same after that season. He'd stick around a couple more years but just couldn't play through the injuries.
This is pretty much the history thread so I'm going to have my Cloutier rant here